A group of voters from a sparsely populated region in Maryland want to form their own state, and they are threatening to secede from Maryland in order to do so. The group, which calls itself the Western Maryland Initiative (WMI), is dissatisfied with the fact that, in a democracy, people with minority views are frequently outvoted by people with more common views. As the Washington Post explains, this movement — as well as similar movements in places like Colorado and California — arose because a “population boom in urban areas such as Baltimore and the Maryland suburbs near the District, the Boulder-Denver areas in Colorado, and in Detroit have filled state legislatures with liberal policymakers pushing progressive agendas out of sync with rural residents, who feel increasingly isolated and marginalized.”

Finally, the Electoral College would guarantee Western Maryland three entire electoral votes. Currently, the Electoral College gives Wyoming residents more than three times as much say in a presidential election as California residents. California receives approximately one electoral vote for every 690,000 residents, while Wyoming enjoys approximately one vote for every 190,000 residents. If Western Maryland became a state, it would look a whole lot more like Wyoming than it would like California.

In other words, whatever the virtue of giving the conservative residents of a sparsely populated region of Maryland more control over their local affairs, the absurd way that the United States allocates power at the federal level precludes allowing such rump movements to secede from their states. Wyoming, with its two senators and exaggerated influence in the House and Electoral College is already an affront to democracy — the Western Maryland Initiative would give us another Wyoming.

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